


Denial Twist

by TheLastGoodGoldfish



Series: reverse [3]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon Typical Aaron Echolls, Canon Typical Adult themes, F/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25398967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastGoodGoldfish/pseuds/TheLastGoodGoldfish
Summary: Truth isn't all it's cracked up to be.Role Reversal AU, III.
Relationships: Logan Echolls & Eli "Weevil" Navarro, Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars
Series: reverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813585
Comments: 12
Kudos: 91





	Denial Twist

**Author's Note:**

> Won't make sense without:  
> [Part I](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997952)  
> [Part II](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25046899)

* * *

_A lot of people get confused_

_and they bruise_

_Real easy when it comes to love_

* * *

“You’re a fucking liar,” Veronica spits at him.

It’s been months since she looked at him with so much hatred—certainly not since the Camelot... not since she hired him to help her find Lianne... fuck, Logan can’t say that Veronica has _ever_ looked at him with this level of pure, unbridled revulsion. Not even in all those months after Lilly died, when she made it her life’s mission to destroy him.

Just like that, whatever happened between them these last few weeks, whatever fragment of their past friendship that was restored, whatever chance for something else, it’s all wrecked now. She stands there, at the far end of Mars Investigations reception, shaking with her rage. Eyes are bright and furious, white hot.

He’s ruined everything.

He had known, of course. He had known she would hate him for it, but he had to tell her. A secret like this—it can’t be kept. She had the right to know.

“It’s not a lie, Ver—”

“Shut UP!” she shouts over him, slamming her eyes shut, and Logan’s chest contracts in pain. He feels sorry for her, and she would murder him, slow and painful, if she knew that. “Shut _up!_ You are so—so fucking deluded!” Her eyes fly open again. “Do you really believe every idiotic thing that man tells you?” She flings an arm at Keith Mars’s (mercifully empty) office, to indicate. “Do you—do you honestly believe that _bullshit_? He’s a lonely, pathetic little man who can’t get over the fact that someone dumped him _twenty years ago!_ ”

“ _Seventeen_ years ago, actually,” Logan corrects, with emphasis, and Veronica winces. “And Keith’s not the one who told me.”

He can’t blame her for the reaction. It’s not as though the same thoughts didn’t cross _his_ mind, not too long ago—not as though he didn’t stand in this very office and hurl similar accusations at the Sheriff when he learned the truth about Keith’s past with Lianne Kane. _Had Sheriff Mars tanked his own career blaming Jake for Lilly’s death, just because he was jealous over his old flame? Had he allowed Logan to lose all his friends, standing by the only decent adult-shaped-human in his life—over something so petty?_

And if that is a horrifying prospect for Logan Echolls, it is far worse for Veronica Kane.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she snaps.

“Veronica, your mother _told_ me...”

“My mother is _sick_ , Logan...” Veronica stomps over to grab her bag from the couch. It seems unthinkable that a few minutes ago, they were sitting together on that couch, _he can still taste her lipgloss_. “She’s an alcoholic. She belongs in _rehab_ —you took advantage—”

“I didn’t take advantage of _shit_ , and you know it. I was trying to bring her home. To _you_.”

Having collected her things, Veronica stalks toward the door, thick-soled boots _thunking_ on the tile. She pauses only long enough to say, “This is pathetic even for you, Logan.” Then she’s gone.

* * *

He didn’t tell Weevil a damn thing, and yet: “What do they call it, Echolls? The definition of insanity?”

“Don’t go getting all philosophical on me now, Weevs.”

“Dumped by a Kane. _Déjà vu_."

"Who said anything...?"

"Please. You stink of it, Hollywood.” Weevil makes some vaguely De Niro-esque gesture with his hand, then dips his head and resumes his work on his bike.

They’re at his uncle’s shop— _Weevil’s_ uncle’s shop, that is; Logan has no uncles to speak of—not to his knowledge, at any rate, though he has never really checked. On the floor, Weevil tinkers away with his Victory—he is downright compulsive about that thing—and Logan has procured for himself the office manager’s swivel chair, where he idles, ostensibly seeking assistance on the Carmen Ruiz case. In reality, he is moping, and Weevil provides distraction.

Just to be a dick, Logan says, “Well, you would have enough experience to know.”

“Fuck off.”

Poor Eli. He has always been a touch sensitive re: their common, tragic history with the late, great Lilly Kane. Logan, for his part, has a degree more of what he believes is _perspective_ on the matter: Logan loved Lilly (that’s a fact), and Lilly loved guys (another fact). Weevil, however, fails to recognize his own romantic tendencies, and therefore fails to correct for them. Necessity and a modicum of Logan’s personal charisma (he flatters himself) have allowed them to arrive at their current state of... comfortable détente (dare he call it “friendship?”), but Logan ought to be more sympathetic to Eli’s sensitivities.

“You could write a _book_ on the subject,” he piles on, instead. (After all, Weevil _did_ sleep with his girlfriend.)

Weevil snorts. “Big talk from the guy who just got dumped by Queen Bitch Ronnie Kane.”

“That’s Queen Bitch _Veronica_ Kane.” Logan balls up the napkin from his In n’ Out and tosses it at Weevil’s head, earning him another glare. “She doesn’t like that nickname.”

“The definition of insanity, Echolls,” Weevil repeats.

“—Is the root of all evil? Makes strange bedfellows? Speaks louder than words?”

Weevil rolls his eyes. “Something like that.”

Logan kicks at the floor, sending his swivel chair into a spin.

“Maybe you should spend a little less time worrying about spoiled Oh-Niner princesses and a little more time helping out Carmen Ruiz,” Weevil oh-so-helpfully suggests, while Uncle Angel's garage whirls around Logan. He plants one foot on the ground, brings the chair to a halt.

“I thought you just wanted to beat the hell out of Tad?”

“I did.” Weevil sets down a wrench, leans in and squints at something on the tire of his bike. “Still do. Is that back on the table?”

“We’ll keep _fisticuffs_ as Plan B,” says Logan. “Let me see if I can swipe his phone first.”

“There’ll be an ass-beating whether or not you get his phone.”

“With my blessing.”

“I don’t need your blessing.”

“Well you’ll have it all the same, Cupcake.”

Weevil simpers sarcastically— _too easy to rile, it almost isn’t any fun._ “I take it back. Call your spoiled Oh-Niner Princess, so _you_ can go back to having ‘plans’ and _I_ can go back to having peace and quiet.”

Logan kicks again, spins round four times. _Would that it were that simple._ He sent a text that he already knows she won’t answer—not until she’s good and ready, if ever. He’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have told her. He _had_ to tell her, but he shouldn’t have.

“Weevil.” Logan stomps both feet down, and the chair pulls to a stop once more. He leans forward, elbows over knees. “Do I detect a note of jealousy? Did you _miss_ me while I was otherwise occupied?”

“You really do think the whole world revolves around you, don’t you?”

“Oh, I know it does. How else do you explain my incredible good luck and overwhelming success in everything I do?”

“I know you think you’re funny, Hollywood, but you’re really just—really annoying.” Weevil grabs a rag from the floor, begins wiping grease from his hands.

“It’s all part of my charm,” says Logan, only half paying attention. His mind is elsewhere, it cannot be denied. Three weeks ago, he kissed Veronica Kane on the balcony outside the Camelot motel. She kissed him back, and nothing in his life has made sense ever since. Least of all the fact that Veronica’s opinion now means something to Logan—means a lot, actually. Kind of everything. And when he’s not reliving the moment in Keith Mars’s office earlier, when she stared him down with so much godawful contempt, he cannot stop seeing her as she was just the other afternoon: seated astride him, _glowing_.

She is this—this force, in a way that he never understood, before.

He had known she was clever and hot, of course; that was never in question. But the way her mind works is different, somehow, from anyone else. She sees through him with finely tuned precision and, in return, demands his attention. She is fierce: behind her bored rich-girl façade, utterly focused and passionate.

He did not expect this, didn’t ask for it, but it happened and now everything is changed.

_he should’ve lied to her, the truth sucks_

“You know you're gonna fuck yourself over," says Weevil, unexpectedly cutting through Logan's reverie. "She'll land you in _something_."

He's thinking of Lilly, Weevil is; thinking that Veronica is like her sister. He is not totally off-base: they are—were—sisters, after all, no matter what a DNA test says. But there are differences—important ones. Lilly soothed. Distracted. She let her joy and her beauty take over every scene; she was happiest at the center of attention, making everything better, lighter, more _fun_ , just by _being_. 

Veronica stands to the side, waits for you to catch her eye, then draws you in when no one is looking. _They_ are alike, Logan and Veronica. They've been circling each other for too long, at a distance but in tandem: the relationship has become symbiotic. Not necessarily the good kind.

Logan kicks the chair into another spin. "I _knew_ you were jealous."

"Fuck off." 

* * *

Veronica always misses Lilly.

Every day she misses Lilly, even still, even now. The tiniest thing will happen—Angie Dahl will say something bitchy or Duncan will do something particularly passive-aggressive—and Veronica will imagine her sister’s little eye-roll. She will hear her sister’s voice, a pithy put down for Angie, a “ _need a tampon, Donut?”_ for their brother. God, Veronica misses Lilly.

Most especially, she misses her in the afternoons, after school. The quiet hours in the Kane house, when Duncan is off, busy as ever with extra-curriculars (‘cause _polo_ is gonna get him elected to Congress, Dad), and her father is occupied at the office. With Mom on the other side of the country drowning herself in cocktails at Mar-a-Lago, Veronica comes home to an empty, silent house most days.

For the last few weeks, Veronica has found other ways of occupying that time...

_she hates him_

Today, she looks forward to the prospect of an empty house... so of _course_ , it’s just her luck that, when she pulls into the driveway, she spots not only her father’s Range Rover, but a vaguely familiar black BMW convertible parked in front of the garage.

Irritated by the unexpected disruption to her anticipated solitude, she almost parks them in, just out of spite. Tempting as such pettiness may seem, it would be counterproductive in the long run. Her dad would only track her down, and she cannot begin to face him yet. Instead, Veronica navigates her Audi over around the side of the garage and slips in through the French doors in the kitchen. She slinks across the house but finds no evidence of her father or his guest, and she makes it up to her bedroom undetected. There, she strips off her clothes; ties on her favorite cherry red bikini; selects sunglasses, a towel, and a book; then heads down to the pool to wait out the company.

She stretches out on the lounger, warming in the May sunshine, closing her eyes behind heart-shaped sunglasses. She leaves _Wide Sargasso Sea_ on the ground beside her, already resigned to the fact that she would absorb very little of it just now.

 _He’s a liar_ , she repeats in her mind, over and over, like a mantra. Logan Echolls is a liar, because if he’s not a liar—if what he’s saying is true...

It’s too fucking awful to imagine. Her father isn’t her father—Lilly and Duncan aren’t even really her siblings... oh God, Celeste would just _love_ that, wouldn’t she?

Growing up, Lilly and Duncan’s mother took great pleasure in making a big show of whisking the two of them away for fancy vacations with her new husband, showering them with expensive gifts, always keen to remind Veronica that she was not her children’s _full_ sibling. She was a part of another, somehow lesser family unit, the outlier...

Of course that strategy backfired eventually. Lilly far preferred Lianne’s “let’s be friends” style of parenting and made sure her biological mother _knew_ it. Duncan went along with whatever his sisters wanted. Lianne Kane won out in the end.

_And she still left. She still ran away._

It’s a lie. It _has_ to be a lie.

But there is no logic to it all. Logan has no motive to lie about this. Why would he want her to believe that _Keith Mars_ is actually her biological...?

 _He wants to bring you down to his level_ , she thinks, but even that feels implausible. Six months ago, she may have been able to convince herself of such an explanation, but now—after everything—after Logan helped her find her mother, after they began to rebuild some tentative form of their old friendship, after the Camelot, these last few weeks...

The sun beats down, heat curls around her bare skin. She can’t help it—she thinks of Logan. Two days ago, before school, in his car parked over by Moon Beach. The back seat. He’d let her climb onto his lap. Kissed her so deeply, she’d never felt anything like that before. The burning need to get closer, to feel everything.

She’s not even a virgin. She wonders if he knows that. If he could guess. If he would think she was silly, how carefully and methodically she had gone about getting rid of her virginity. She conscientiously selected her target—not a Neptune High boy, of course, but a handsome senior from Fulton Academy, the private school in La Jolla. She thought if he was a little older, had a little more experience, she would get more out of it. Even then, Veronica was never naïve about the thing. Despite Lilly’s frankly unbelievable narratives of her sexual exploits, Veronica also read her share of _Cosmo_. Her expectations had been realistic for a first time with a teenage boy, and it hadn’t been _bad_ exactly. The next experiment in the matter, with the lifeguard at the Club over the summer, was measurably more successful.

Neither fling had come close to third base in the back seat of Logan Echolls’s car.

_how could he be lying to her_

Somehow, the most disturbing part of an entirely disturbing situation is—she doesn’t want him to be lying. She doesn’t want him to have lied to her.

_He could be mistaken. Her mother could be a liar._

—Also ridiculous. Her mother has nothing to gain from that story and everything to lose...

“Veronica Kane—look at _you_.”

Veronica's eyes startle open, and she discovers two things: one, that she is no longer alone in her backyard, and two, the identity of the owner of the BMW in the driveway.

“Hi, Mr. Echolls,” she says.

Aaron Echolls in-the-flesh might not live up to the sheen and glamour of the Silver Screen version, but it’s a close match: tanned, slick, relaxed, in his white jacket, slacks. Athletic-tinged leisure-wear. _Golf with Dad._ Veronica's gut clenches and churns uncomfortably. An instinct. He's not supposed to be back here. 

When Mr. Echolls does not answer, she adds: “You lost?”

He smiles down at her, shifts his weight to one leg, so his head blocks the sun. He stands a few feet away, a plausibly polite distance, but still Veronica resists the urge to squirm. This is her home, not his. “I was playing a couple holes with your dad,” he says. “Just on my way out now.”

“Then you _must_ be lost,” she says, sugary sweet. She closes her eyes again, settles back against the lounger. “Your car’s out by the garage.”

“Just thought I'd come take a look at the work your mom had done out here.” He nods across the swimming pool at the new firepit and tile patio they've just put in. "It's good to see you. It's been a while."

“Sure has.” When was it—Lilly’s funeral? No, the Christmas party, most likely.

Veronica has never been particularly proud of the fact that her father maintained a friendship with Aaron Echolls after Aaron abandoned Logan and Mrs. Echolls. Despite the numerous rumors Veronica has circulated on the topic, she has no true idea of what transpired to end Aaron and Lynn Echolls’ Hollywood Fairytale marriage—nor how it can be that the split ended so inequitably. Aaron lives in Beverly Hills these days, remarried to another actress (newly minted A-lister Chloe Luna), still pulling in twenty million a picture... and Mrs. Echolls—well, Lynn is _Lynn_. She cannot possibly be satisfied in a neighborhood that is so decidedly middle class.

“You staying in town long?” she asks, when he neither replies nor retreats.

“I’ll be at the Grand for a couple nights.” He probably tells his new wife that he bought the hotel penthouse so he can visit with Logan. Rumor has it, he uses the suite for entertaining of a less wholesome nature. Anyway, his tone makes Veronica’s skin crawl.

It’s not as though Aaron Echolls would actually pursue _her_ —Veronica isn’t so stuck-up as to believe that... he is a blockbuster movie star, and she is _literally_ a teenage girl—but she dislikes the feeling all the same.

“That’s nice.” Her eyes remain closed, but she grows abruptly chilly, and she knows that he has moved to block the sun completely, casting her in his shadow. She does not stir. “It should give you a chance to get a few more holes in, right?”

He makes a sound, like he’s choked on his own breath.

“Golf with Dad, I mean,” she adds. 

His voice gets lower, meaner somehow: “That’s the plan.” 

_The asshole isn’t even ashamed of it. And why the hell is he out here talking to_ her?

“Well, I know Logan will be glad to see you.” Veronica tips her sunglasses low to the end of her nose and blinks her eyes open. “Say ‘hi’ to him for me, Mr. Echolls.”

Aaron’s smile tightens—becomes something bitter and cold, difficult to look at. Makes her want to run.

There is less than zero chance that a visit with Logan is on his itinerary.

“Veronica,” he says—she refuses to look away, refuses to give him that—“It’s always so good seeing you and your family.” He lifts his hand in a short, snappy wave, then strolls past her.

When he’s gone, disappeared around the other side of the house, Veronica sits up. She leans forward, wipes sweat from her brow.

 _Creep_.

She's having trouble keeping score, and if the enemy of her enemy is her friend, then by all rights, she should not feel such revulsion towards Aaron Echolls. But the math is a little fuzzy there, and Veronica has _never_ much liked Logan's father. People should not leave their children alone in the world—especially not in Neptune. Neptune is a mean town to grow up in, all alone.

_He had no right to come out here and bother her, anyway. Not in her own backyard._

She pulls off her sunglasses and folds them on top of her book, on the concrete below. The sun is bright, her eyes need a moment to adjust. When they have, she pushes herself up off the lounger and walks toward the pool. She stands on the warm tile next to the deep end, red painted toes curling over edge. Crystal clear blue water, still and smooth below.

She barely ever swims anymore. She used to be on swim team—Lilly made fun of her for it, said no one cool did Swim— _with all those sports, you’re never gonna get boobs, Nicky_. Lilly was rarely serious, and Veronica knew better than to heed much of her sister’s advice.

It still feels unreal, that Veronica will never truly hear Lilly’s voice again. Her nonsensical maxims, uttered with unflappable confidence... her quips, complaints, her nickname for Veronica, the one only Lilly ever used.

 _"I’ve got a secret, Nicky. A_ good _one."_

Veronica breathes in once, deeply. _Tanning oil, chlorine, strawberry-scented shampoo._

Logan isn’t lying.

She closes her eyes, raises her arms, and dives into the water.

* * *

She is such the cliche: the rich girl who gets her thrills committing petty crimes. Climbing through the window of her maybe-boyfriend's bedroom, because she snuck out, it's late, and she doesn't want his mom to know. The scene feels almost quaint.

He left the window unlocked for her, probably. "Always the breaking and entering, with you," is all he says across the dark room, when she steps inside, slides the window shut behind her. He allows her to curl up beside him in his bed—the sheets are fresh and clean, nicer than she expected for a teenage boy—and accepts her presence for what it is: half atonement, half request. He acquiesces on both counts.

He certainly expects no apology, but maybe, before she sneaks away again, she'll surprise them both. 


End file.
